The Zohar: Bereshith to Lekh Lekha · 111 of 111

Notes

By this expression Is meant the divine humanity whose transcendent glory, majesty and splendor are beyond the powers of human comprehension and language to express. He is the Augoeides of the Platonists. By theologians and in Christian creeds, he is called the Unigenitus, Light of light. very find of very god, begotten, not made, the brightness and reflection of the great divine Father of Light and love and the express image of his person. In Kabbalistic philosophy, he is termed the heavenly man, Adam Kadmon, Merkava (the chariot). Few are they who have enjoyed the high privilege of beholding him.

Context

This closing passage (invoking the Augoeides of the Platonists and Christian creedal language about the Unigenitus and Light of light) is almost certainly not part of the original Aramaic Zohar. It is the work of the late nineteenth-century English translator (or his source), reading Christian-Cabalistic interpretations into the closing of the volume. The authentic Zoharic doctrine of Adam Kadmon (the Primordial Human) and Zeir Anpin (the divine personification of the central column) is a Jewish theology of the divine countenance, not a Christological statement. Read this paragraph as translator’s epilogue, not as primary text. The genuine Zoharic teaching on the divine person reaches its fullest expression in the Idra Rabba and Idra Zuta (the partzufim doctrine), without any of this Christian apparatus.

It is only the pure is heart that see him, and that only occasionally. The glory surrounding him is too overwhelming for human eyes to behold An ancient seer and prophet. Ezechiel, says: “And when I saw it, I fell upon my face.” Another equally Illustrious seer relates: “And when I saw him, I fell at his feet, as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, ‘Fear not; I am the first and the last.’” Another says of him: “To Him every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that He most reign until all things become subject to Him, and then will He deliver up His Kingdom to the Father, and God shall be All and in all.”

Notes

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